by Rollin Bishop

In an unruly sea of bad news for the gaming industry from Xbox to PlayStation, there are still some bright points to celebrate. For example, did you know that Sega announced an entirely new animated Sonic the Hedgehog short — Sonic the Hedgehog: Memories and Beyond — at Anime Expo 2026?

Because it did.

This is just the latest in a long line of animated Sonic shorts and original animation that traces back roughly 10 years or more. At least, this vein, anyway; Sonic and animation have gone hand in hand much, much longer. But Memories and Beyond, billed as the franchise's 35th anniversary animated short, very explicitly owes a debt of gratitude to the video game Sonic Mania and the animated work of Tyson Hesse and team on the trailer for that game, the opening animation for that game, the Sonic Mania Adventures series of animated shorts, and so on; it's a direct line from here to there with plenty of animation between.

And if you've not seen the delightful Sonic Mania Adventures series… well, you can correct that right now:

Here's the synopsis for Sonic the Hedgehog: Memories and Beyond, straight from Sega:

"Dr. Eggman's new evil scheme is to upgrade Metal Sonic into the ultimate fighting machine by stealing Sonic's life-data and harnessing the power of the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic and his friends realize that to defeat Metal Sonic they must rely on the friendship they built through their adventures."

The new animated short was announced during the Anime Expo panel, "Sonic the Hedgehog Animated Shorts: A Frame-by-Frame Retrospective," which featured members of the Sonic art and animation team like Takashi Iizuka, Austin Keys, and Jasmin Hernandez with special guests Hesse, Evan Stanley, and Alan Wan. The new short doesn't appear to have announced production details, but the speculation is that GXS Productions is behind it given its recent Sonic work.

I've been following Sonic's animated output for longer than I care to admit, but Sonic Mania Adventures really awoke something in me for the charming 2D hand-drawn designs for the various characters. When given the opportunity to actually speak with some of the folks responsible, well, I couldn't help myself.

"[W]e had been discussing how we can replicate this innocent, untapped original world of Sonic, and how we can replicate the '90s Saturday morning cartoon type of feel," said Yukio Kusumoto, Sega's Senior Director of Animation, when we spoke back in 2019 about how all of this came about. "So our conclusion was we're not gonna do 3D, but let's do hand-drawn animation."

"And that was a challenge itself, 'cause as you know, only a very handful of production houses does hand-drawn animation at this time," he continued, "and we were searching Japan, Korea, the U.S., but finally we reached this production house called Neko Productions, located in Burbank, actually not too far from our office in Burbank, and it's a little bit small production but they have a really good pool of hand-drawing animators."

"And we talk about the style and something close to the game, yet original," he said. "So we came up with this look that is hand drawn and not too polished to have kind of, you know, 'for the fans, by the fans' type of feel. And we spent a few months designing the character, and we worked very closely with Mr. [Takashi] Iizuka, the head of [Product Development] here, and we finally nailed the look. And the rest is history."

/out of frame

👻 Rollin: I am so beyond thrilled that Science Saru's The Ghost in the Shell has begun releasing! I didn't get to watch ahead of time like Kam, so I'm going to be experiencing it alongside the public.

👻 Toussaint: I too am psyched to watch Science Saru's The Ghost in the Shell! As a long-time fan of both the manga and the anime spawned by it, it's a great pleasure to this latest incarnation returning to the source with an emphasis on Masamune Shirow's original comedic tone and dense worldbuilding footnotes. Now, if we could only get an adaptation of Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface…